Hermann Stieffel,
Soldier Artist
of the West
_A number of gifted artists painted the West and the colorful
Indian-fighting army of the post-Civil-War period, but since none
of these were military men their work lacked the viewpoint that
only a soldier could provide._
_German-born Hermann Stieffel, for 24 years a private in the U.S.
Infantry, painted a series of water colors while serving in the
Indian country in the 1860's and 1870's. Although Stieffel could
never be called talented, and certainly was untutored as an artist,
his unusually canny eye for the colorful and graphic and his
meticulous attention to detail have given us valuable pictorial
documentaries on the West during the Indian wars._
_The Author: Edgar M. Howell is curator of military history in the
United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution._
The American West has never wanted for artists with a high sense of the
documentary. Through the talented hands of men like George Catlin, Carl
Bodmer and Alfred Jacob Miller, Frederick Remington, and the cowboy
painter Charles M. Russell the trans-Mississippi regions have been
pictured as have few other areas on earth.[1] From historical and
ethnological standpoints these men made tremendous and timeless
contributions to our American heritage. But the West held an esthetic
fascination for the untutored and less talented as well, and not a few
soldiers, miners, stage drivers, and just plain adventurers recorded
their impressions on paper and canvas. Crude though many of these works
are, they are nonetheless significant, for they are a graphic record of
what these men saw, where they lived, and what they did, in many cases
the only record of particular places and events, for the camera of L. A.
Huffman and his colleagues did not come into its own until the late
1870's.[2] Without them we would have no description, graphic or
otherwise, of much of the West both before and after the Civil War--the
early trading posts and forts, the Oregon, Santa Fe, and Overland
Trails, the Bozeman Trail, the stage stations, all of which played a
part in the opening and development of the West.[3]
[Illustration: Figure 2.--Attack on General Marcy's train near Pawnee
Fort, Kansas, September 23, 1867. The train was escorted by Company K,
5th U.S. Infantry, Brevet Major D. H. Brotherton commanding. (_USNM
384185; Smithsonian photo 38986-A._)]
In 1946 the heirs of Lt. Col. David H. Brotherton, U.S. Army, an
Indian-fighting officer of many years experience on the frontier,
donated to the United States National Museum a collection[4] comprising
a number of Sioux Indian specimens, including a Model 1866 Winchester
carbine said to have been surrendered in 1881 to Colonel Brotherton by
the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, and ten water colors by a German-born
private soldier, Hermann Stieffel of Company K, 5th U.S. Infantry. Nine
of these paintings (the tenth being a view of Rattenberg in the Tyrol
Alps) are photographically reproduced herein. They constitute an
unusually graphic and colorful, if somewhat unartistic, series of
documentaries on the West of the post-Civil-War Indian fighting period.
It can be surmised that Brotherton obtained the paintings from Stieffel,
for from 1861 to 1879 he commanded the infantry company in which the
latter spent the entire 24 years of his Army career. Brotherton's career
itself is an interesting sidelight on the West of the period and an
excellent if somewhat sad commentary on the promotion system in the Army
during a period when the development of the West was so heavily
dependent on the Army's curbing Indian depredations.
Brotherton was graduated from the U.S. Military Academy with the class
of 1854 along with several officers who later distinguished themselves
in the Confederate States Army, including George Washington Custis Lee,
son of Robert E. Lee, John Pegram, J. E. B. Stuart, Stephen D. Lee, and
William Dorsey Pender.[5] Assigned to the 5th Infantry, Brotherton by
1861 had risen to the rank of captain and had acquired considerable
experience against the Comanches and Apaches in the Southwest, the
Seminoles in Florida, and the Mormons in Utah. Electing to remain with
his regiment at the outbreak of the Civil War rather than resign and
enter a volunteer or militia unit where he easily might have risen to
general rank as did so many of his contemporaries, he remained a captain
in the Army until 1879 when a vacancy occurred and he was promoted to
major. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1883 after 29 years of
service, but only at the expense of transferring from his old regiment
to the 7th Infantry, where there was a vacancy at that rank. He retired
for disability in 1885 after 30 years of almost constant service in the
field.
We know little of Stieffel the man. He was born in Wiesbaden, Germany,
in 1826, and became a printer by trade, indicating a fair amount of
education. He emigrated to this country at an unknown date and in
December 1857 at New York City enlisted in the Army as a private of
infantry. He was 31 years old at the time, and was described as being
five feet five and one-half inches tall with blue eyes, sandy hair, and
a fair complexion.[6] He remained a private for the entire time of his
military service. After recruit training at a general depot, he was
assigned to Company K, 5th Infantry, joining that unit late in August
1858 at Camp Floyd (later Fort Crittenden), Utah Territory, where the
regiment was an element of Col. Albert Sidney Johnston's "Army of Utah"
sent westward to police the recalcitrant Mormons.[7]
Stieffel's record shows nothing of note until December 1859 when he was
court-martialed and fined.[8] This court-martial seemed to set the pace
for him. Although the precise charge on which he was tried is not
stated, in view of his later record it can be surmised that it was for
drunkenness--a very common offense in the frontier army--for in October
1861 Stieffel owed a sutler $27.95, a heavy debt for a day when a
private's net pay was less than $11.00 a month.[9] The debt remained
unpaid through 1862 and even increasing an additional $15.00. During
this period Stieffel also was in confinement on a number of occasions
for crimes or misdemeanors unspecified.[10]
In 1860 the 5th Infantry was transferred from Utah southward to the
Department of New Mexico. It was here in 1862 that Stieffel saw his
first combat in Col. E. R. S. Canby's[11] Union force, which frustrated
the wild Confederate attempt under Brig. Gen. H. H. Sibley to invade the
present states of New Mexico and Arizona and conquer California.[12]
Captain Brotherton, Private Stieffel, and the remainder of Company K
fought in the sharp action at Valverde, New Mexico, on February 21,
1862, and evidently with some distinction as Brotherton was breveted
major for gallantry as a result of his unit's performance.[13]
Unfortunately for posterity, Stieffel did not record his impressions of
this little-known sideshow of the Civil War.
[Illustration: Figure 3.--Satanta addressing the peace commissioners at
Council Grove, Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas. (_USNM 384183; Smithsonian
photo 38298._)]
The Battle of Valverde was Stieffel's only experience in formal combat
so far as the record shows. After the final withdrawal of Sibley's force
into Texas whence it had come, the 5th Infantry turned its hand to
policing the Indians and was almost constantly in the field during the
period 1863-1866.[14] Stieffel, however, was seldom with his unit during
this time. When not on one of his frequent stays in the stockade, he was
on extra duty at the closest army hospital.[15] He continued on such
duty for most of the remainder of his service,[16] except for
confinements, a period of desertion, and necessary changes of station.
Stieffel's exact unofficial status in Company K over the years is
difficult to account for. It is possible, though hardly probable, that
Captain Brotherton had developed a friendship with the German, which
might account for both his acquisition of the paintings and Stieffel's
extra-duty tours. But such is doubtful. Brotherton was a hardened
professional officer in an era when there was a far wider gap between
officer and enlisted man than exists today. There is no evidence that
Stieffel was a shirker. At the end of each enlistment he reenlisted and
always in Company K, and such reenlistment was subject to the company
commander's veto. It is probable that he was not a particularly good
soldier. But after the Civil War an army career in the ranks held little
glamor for the average young man and recruiting officers were hard put
to keep the ranks even partially filled, too often being forced to take
what they could get. The most plausible explanation is that since every
unit in the Army, then as today, was constantly called on for extra-duty
men, the company first sergeant just as constantly selected the
apparently agreeable Stieffel as the person whose absence was least
likely to weaken the combat readiness of the company. The arrangement
must have suited Brotherton, for he allowed it to continue for years. It
obviously suited Stieffel, for once he was placed more or less
permanently on such detail his periods of confinement ceased. Hospital
duty in that day and age was hardly arduous, and the discipline was
light. Also, it provided 25 cents a day extra pay. Thus, this duty gave
Stieffel time to paint and, if our surmise is correct, both the time and
the money for him to indulge his thirst. In any case, we are indebted to
this light duty that gave him the opportunity to paint.
In September 1867 Company K left New Mexico for Fort Harker, Kansas, in
the Department of the Missouri, as escort for Brig. Gen. R. B. Marcy, an
old member of the 5th Infantry who was acting as inspector general for
troop units west of the Mississippi. On that march of something more
than 500 miles the column was sharply attacked near Fort Dodge on the
Arkansas River by a large force of Cheyenne believed led by Black
Kettle, and Stieffel had his second and last taste of combat. The action
must have impressed him, for it furnished the subject of the first of
his paintings (fig. 2). From Fort Harker, Company K escorted the Indian
peace commissioners to Council Grove on Big Medicine Lodge Creek for
their treaty meeting with the Kiowas, Apaches, Comanches, Cheyenne, and
Arapahoes in October. This historic meeting Stieffel witnessed and
depicted with considerable color and attention to detail (figs. 3, 4).
[Illustration: Figure 4.--Camp of the peace commissioners at Medicine
Lodge Creek, Kansas. (_USNM 384184; Smithsonian photo 38298-A._)]
After another period of hospital duty at Fort Harker (figs. 6, 7),
Stieffel went in the field, for what appears to have been the last time,
as a member of a wagon-train escort to Medicine Bluff, Indian Territory
(present day Oklahoma), where General Sheridan was establishing Fort
Sill on the southern edge of the Wichita Mountains.[17] This picturesque
overhang of Medicine Bluff Creek, a small tributary of the Red River,
was the subject of one of Stieffel's landscapes and perhaps his finest
single work (fig. 5).
[Illustration: Figure 5.--The Wichita Mountains from Medicine Bluffs,
Indian Territory. (_USNM 384188; Smithsonian photo 42880._)]
After this brief interlude in the wilderness, Stieffel went back to his
hospital work. Then in September 1873, following a change of station
for Company K from Harker to Fort Leavenworth, he went in desertion
until the following May, being restored to duty upon his return, rather
strangely, without trial but with loss of pay for the period of his
absence.[18] The only possible explanation for this leniency in a period
when court-martial sentences tended to severity could be that since
extra-duty men had to be furnished, Stieffel was worth more to the
company out of the stockade than in. With Indian unrest increasing every
man counted.[19]
[Illustration: Figure 6.--Fort Harker, Kansas; east side. (_USNM 384187;
Smithsonian photo 42895._)]
Following the Custer massacre on June 25, 1876, all posts in the
Department of the Missouri were virtually stripped of troops, among them
the 5th Infantry, and dispatched to the Department of Dakota in an
all-out attempt to bring the rampaging Sioux under control. But Stieffel
saw no action in the campaigns that followed. He was sick[20] and was
left behind on July 12 when Company K left Leavenworth for the northwest
for five years of almost continuous campaigning including numerous
actions with the Sioux and the campaign against the gifted Indian
tactician, Chief Joseph, and his Nez Perce. We could wish that Stieffel
had been present during the Nez Perce campaign, for he might have
pictured for us Nelson Miles and the 5th Infantry taking the surrender
of Joseph in the Bear Paw Mountains at the end of his epochal 1,600-mile
running fight.[21]
Stieffel remained at Fort Leavenworth until 1877 when he rejoined his
regiment at Cantonment Tongue River, Montana Territory, renamed Fort
Keogh in 1879. At Keogh he was again placed on hospital extra-duty and
so remained until he was discharged June 23, 1882,[22] on a surgeon's
certificate of disability. After his discharge he retired to the
Soldier's Home in Washington where he died on December 14, 1886, at the
age of 60. He was buried in the National Cemetery on the Soldiers' Home
grounds.[23]
Stieffel painted three scenes of Fort Keogh and vicinity--one of the
fort itself, one of Miles City across the Tongue River, and a landscape
of the Yellowstone River near Miles City (figs. 8-10).